In the first photograph, a man presumed dead lies on a table, draped with a large cloth. As the series continues, his soul appears as a silhouette, extracting itself from the man’s body, rising up to walk before the camera, as if by magic. This sequence of photographs, entitled Renaissance, by the American artist Duane Michals, was created through double exposure, a technique in which the image of one photograph is superimposed onto another, merging the two. Produced in the 1970s, long before the advent of digital technology and editing software like Photoshop, this series reminds us (if we naively thought otherwise) that the manipulation of the image has existed as long as photography itself.
This is precisely the subject of a captivating new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, curated by Mia Fineman. The show features more than 200 altered photographs taken between 1840 to 1990. We see a man with two heads, a group photo where Hitler had Joseph Goebbels airbrushed out, Stalin and Lenin side by side, a wall with a face, a man juggling disembodied heads, and a blimp docking at the Empire State Building. All were modified after their printing, usually through photomontage and overpainting. We discover tricks, special effects and above all photographs whose humor is an essential component.
It’s impossible here not to fall into a debate about the authentic representation of reality. Do we have the right to mislead? Even if nothing is added or subtracted, are we entitled to enhance the image? Should photography always have a link to the real? When photography and its manipulation allow the wildest desires of the human imagination to run free, the creative spirit prevails. The room dedicated to the Surrealists will delight those who believe that photography should question objectivity and consider itself a malleable visual medium, like painting and film.
Jonas Cuénin
Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop
Until January 27th, 2013
Metropolitan Museum de New York
1000 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10028
(212) 535-7710
